Comprehensive NATO

Comprehensive NATO GLOBSEC NATO ADAPTATION INITIATIVE Supporting Paper The GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Initiative, led by General (Retd) John R. Allen, is GLOBSEC’s foremost contribution to debates about the future of the Alliance. Given the substantial changes within the global security environment, GLOBSEC has undertaken a year-long project, following its annual Spring conference and the July NATO Summit in Warsaw, to explore challenges faced by the Alliance in adapting to a very different strategic environment than that of any time since the end of the Cold War. The Initiative envisages a series of policy papers which will address the nature of NATO adaptation and the challenges it must overcome if it is to remain a viable and credible alliance for the peace and stability in the transatlantic area. The policy papers published within the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Initiative are authored by the Initiative’s Steering Committee members: General (Retd) John R. Allen, Admiral (Retd) Giampaolo di Paola, General (Retd) Wolf Langheld, Professor Julian Lindley-French, Ambassador Tomáš Valášek, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow and other acclaimed authorities from the field of global security and strategy. The aim of the involvement of such a wide array of experts is to reinforce the unique partnership between policy-makers, military leaders and leading academics and commentators. These policy papers will prelude and result with the publication of the Initiative’s Steering Committee Recommendation Two Pager and the Main Report to be launched in October 2017. The Interim Report will be released during the GLOBSEC 2017 Bratislava Forum. These outputs will be augmented by shorter policy papers (on cybersecurity, A2/AD capability, intelligence, and threats emanating from the South) prepared by the GLOBSEC Policy Institute between January and October 2017. www.cepolicy.org/projects/globsec-nato-adaptation-initiative Comprehensive NATO Comprehensive NATO By John R. Allen and Stefano Stefanini Introduction If comprehensive means “including or dealing with all or nearly all elements or aspects of something”1 and that something is the international security environment, the Atlantic Alliance choice is not whether or not, but to what extent, to be comprehensive. NATO exists today, and in the near future, at an inflection point. How it reacts to this “moment” in history will define the security of the Alliance and the stability and security of much of the rest of the world over the long term. The case for NATO to be a “comprehensive” alliance, politically as well as militarily, is based on its unique capacity to bring together countries whose values and interests are inextricably intertwined in confronting conventional threats from aggressive powers as well as transnational threats to citizens’ security. No single nation can meet these challenges on its own, thus NATO allows its members to do so together. But the geostrategic environment will not leave NATO alone to look inward. Or, to put it differently, NATO must look outward to deter aggression, to enhance partnerships, to expand relationships, and to export stability. The need for a more comprehensive NATO has never been greater, and with this need, so too the stakes for NATO have never been greater. 1 Oxford Dictionary. 3 GLOBSEC NATO ADAPTATION INITIATIVE “Contained” versus “comprehensive” According to the prevailing school of thought, NATO should mainly limit itself to the conventional and territorial elements of Euro-Atlantic security. This conviction is shared by a substantial number of Allies who point to the Alliance’s previous successes in doing so and at its mixed results in dealing with more complex aspects and threats. This view cannot be dismissed out of hand as its advocates are a vital component of the Alliance. The case against it is based on two counter-arguments. First, such limitations would set NATO apart from the issues that trigger insecurity in large bodies of public opinion and, increasingly, among political leadership: international terrorism, the spread of ISIL, increasing instability in the southern tier, and uncontrolled immigration. In addition, a “contained” NATO would be ill equipped to deal with the entire new body of threats emanating from cyberspace2 and info-operations, new technologies (such as drones, artificial intelligence, electromagnetic pulse etc.). It is an area that requires enhanced strategic and operational awareness and faster decision-making within NATO. It cannot be confronted in isolation. Second, if this philosophy is adopted, one would have to live with the consequences: the rest of the security sphere will have to be taken care of outside the structure of NATO. The Alliance would not be obsolete but limited in scope: only a partial security guarantor. Against the backdrop of Brexit and of the new American administration, the political impact on Atlantic solidarity and Western cohesion would be unpredictable. If instead NATO chooses to be more, rather than less, comprehensive, it needs to look beyond the traditional European security horizon. This could be the main adaptation challenge with which NATO is confronted today. In the conventional area, the power balance is shifting in the Asia-Pacific region; China and India are rising military powers to be reckoned with. In the less conventional area, citizens’ threat perception has expanded to non-state actors and asymmetric attacks. As NATO adaptation moves forward, the need to address homeland security must become a key reality. International terrorism and state failures have ripple effects in exporting instability across borders and well beyond the crisis area. Refugee flows and uncontrolled immigration are a case in point and are having a strategic impact on Europe. Across the transatlantic space, the overall non-conventional impact has created strong public demand for security. It is up to the Alliance whether or not to respond to it. Comprehensiveness starts at home, especially for a large family of 29 nations. There is clearly a need for enhanced intra-Alliance and cross-Atlantic political dialogue. NATO lives by consensus and consensus crumbles in the face of fissures within a large and increasing membership on out-of-area engagements or the handling of Russia. These differences can only be addressed by strengthening internal discussion and consultation. A comprehensive NATO needs to have a global security outlook, but this does not inherently mean the Alliance must become a “global NATO”. The Alliance cannot and should not do everything. However, by engaging with the rest of the world, NATO would maximize available resources and share security burdens with other interested parties, either nations or international and regional organizations. Such engagement should be measured against the capacity of the Alliance to fulfill its core tasks: collective defense; crisis management; and cooperative security. None of these tasks can be pursued in isolation. Cooperative security requires defusing crises and projecting stability, actions that in turn reinforce the Alliance’s collective self-defense. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways, means, tools – and limitations – that could render NATO truly comprehensive and thus capable of meeting its missions as it adapts to the new security environment. 2 At the Warsaw summit of July 2016 “the Allies recognised cyberspace as an operational domain, joining land, air and sea” (Warsaw Summit Key Decisions, NATO Fact Sheet, February 2017) 4 Comprehensive NATO Why should NATO be comprehensive? The Atlantic Alliance was not born in international isolation. On the contrary, the preamble of the Washington Treaty refers to the members as, “Parties reaffirming their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”. NATO is thus a part of a wider multilateral system, which emerged after World War II - alongside the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the European Union - which has been responsible for assuring seven decades of peace, stability and prosperity, especially in the Atlantic and European space. The Treaty’s goals, collective defense and security and the preservation of peace, were envisaged to exist in connection with, not in isolation from, the rest of the world. The issue of Alliance adaptation to the evolving international environment has been with NATO since the early days. It was the gist of the “Three Wise Men” report of December 13, 19563. During its first forty years cold war dynamics forced NATO to concentrate on two strategic directions that involved minimal external outreach: solidarity among Allies and deterrence of the Soviet military threat in Europe. By containing the Soviet Union, NATO also made a positive contribution to European integration (the same rationale would subsequently apply to post-cold war enlargement). For the first time in its history Europe was not going to war with itself but lay protected behind NATO’s shield. And, the United States was no longer the ‘rescue force’ to stop continental war between the states of Western Europe. During that period confrontation, crises and wars in other theaters (Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Middle East, Afghanistan) were not notably on NATO’s agenda as they were not perceived as threats to the collective security of Allies. The four nations that joined the 1949 founders of the Alliance, Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982) were inside the Western perimeter. What mattered was to preserve and strengthen inner solidarity and integration. The scenario changed radically after 1989. With the crumbling of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the reunification of Germany, the center of gravity of the security threat to the Alliance shifted first from the Fulda Gap and the Luneburg Heath to the power vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe, and then to the Balkan wars, to instability and fundamentalism in the Mediterranean and in the Greater Middle East, to terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and, lastly (and most recently) cyber warfare. The threat shifted first from conventional to hybrid; more recently the ‘threat’ increasingly defies accurate description, detection, identification and attribution.

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